Just another day of training

Well, today was just another day of training. I started in the front yard with Deets working on his 2X2s, and he still remembered perfectly how to get weaves his 6 poles. He's a little bad about getting his entry from the right side, which I recognize as my own fault for mistakes made with step 1 in the 2X2 method, but it's nothing I can't fix with good repetition, and now I know better so I won't make the same mistake with Mimzy.

All the dogs and I loaded up and went out to CMStreek to work on the field in the afternoon. Landon and I worked on going to the tunnel from a distance of about 15 feet, which is a skill I realized we needed to work on at the last trial when he wouldn't complete the gamble in USDAA gamblers. Then we did some weaves and I let him quit for the day, seeing as how good he's been lately and he was already getting hot and therefor tired.

Mimzy and I worked on going to the tunnel, too, but she's splendid at that so we worked contacts on the contact trainer. I was able to move the trainer to a steeper slope today, and she was still great about hitting the bottom and stopping. She's a little slow about it when I stay behind her... she doesn't like to go all the way to the bottom, and sometimes when she does she turns around to look at me. She's getting there, though. We played the teeter totter game some more and she actually went up the board and made the teeter go down by herself, but she was very hesitant about it, so I think we need to play with the obstacle on the ground more and maybe with the wobble board some more.

Deets and I worked on some distance jumps and tunnels, too, and he's so reliable at a distance. We worked on contacts on the A-frame and Dog-walk and he is just great with them. He stops two-on/two-off every time and waits for me to tell him to go. Then we grabbed a set of 6 weave poles and worked the 2X2 method working around the "clock" a bit, and even threw in a jump for fun.

A successful day for Deets!

Well, it's been a busy last week for the dogs. Landon has been working steadily at his 12 sets of weaves and doing a very admirable job. He's got about 80% accuracy... he pops out of the last two poles so we're opening up the weaves for him at the end so he has some good chances for success. His distance work is getting great and we're finally getting really good at it.

Mimzy's head has sort of been in the clouds the past few days, and I can't help but feel it's the weather finally warming up and all the nice smells of Spring coming out. She's slowly working the contact trainer to learn her "holds" but she's slower than Deets is at learning and I sometimes forget to slow down with her. She is very good at getting her two-on, two-off and waiting, but only when she sees me stop. If I keep running or hold back she doesn't go all the way to the bottom. We played the Teeter Totter Game again today, and she was much better about it than last session. She is not nearly as afraid of the board coming down, and is now jumping to push the board down from about 2 feet up in the air. She'll be doing her "C" in no time!

Today was really Deets' successful day. We went to train and he's finally really got his contacts. We moved up to the big A-frame and Dog-walk and he's got them about 90% of the time... he stops 2-on, 2-off and freezes with complete attention on me to go to the next obstacle. This means the only thing we have left to learn before we can compete in Standards is the weave poles. Aaaannnd.... we've just about got those! Today was Deets/ 4th day of 2X2 training, with several short sessions every day. In that time, we've added a second set of poles moving in toward the first, gone to weaving four poles, and tonight we added another set and now have 6 weaves in four days. We're going to wait here for a few days and get this really solid and taking the weaves from all over "the clock", and some hard entires. We'll also add in a jump before, so he learns to sequence the weaves in. After we spend some more time doing that, we will add a second set of 6 weaves and begin closing those together to get 12 poles. Should take us less than a week.

Teeter Totter

Well, it's been an interesting week. I haven't been able to continue the 2X2s because I had to run to Dallas for 5 days, and then had a week swamped with tests and homework at school. Monday night Landon and Deets had their regular classes. Landon and I have been working on distance work, because I have an awful habit of taking my dogs to every obstacle. We're getting a lot better about it and Landon is, in result, getting much faster. He's also slowly conquering his fear of the teeter totter, which we now call "See" (short for see-saw) and will do it now without bailing off the side, but he still does it very slowly.

Deets and Mimzy both need to learn to do the teeter totter. Deets has got it down, now, after clicker trianing him to do it. I started a few weeks ago by playing the "teeter totter game" with him, in which I hold down the "up" side of the teeter and wait for him to touch it with his paw. When he did, I clicked and gave a treat. Slowly I required him to do more and threw a bigger learning curve at him, so instead of one pay I wanted two on the board. When he was coming at the board with both paws quickly and without hesitation, I raised the end of the board up by about an inch, and had him slam it down and clicked. By this point, instead of clicking as soon as his paws touched the board, I clicked when the board hit the ground. Slowly I raised the board higher and higher with every try, so that, after two 10 minute sessions in a week span Deets was jumping up with his front feet and making the board slam from its full height.

I then started to vary my position around the board, making Deets run up and slam the board from coming around my side, or from ten feet away instead of right next to me. He LOVED the game, and picked up on it really quickly. Soon, I asked him to actually walk up the board and perform the teeter like it should be, and he did it without hesitation of fear. By the third time he did it this way, he understood that the whole point of the game was to make the teeter totter slam as hard as he could make it. I continued to click when the board hit the ground, so that the reinforcer is not the clicker itself, but the sound of the bang on the teeter totter. Deets learned to do the teeter without issue with less than 30 minutes of total training. By his third session working he is able to perform it in sequences with jumps.

Mimzy, however, does not like the teeter totter game. I just started to play with her yesterday and she quickly learned to put her paws on the board while it doesn't move and enjoys the game... but as soon as I let it up an inch off the ground and it moved under her paws she became very fearful and ran around me in circles and barked and got very frustrated. Instead of continuing the game, I decided to teach her to play on the wobble board with me, so we took the clicker and learned to get on the wobble board. She's still pretty frightening, so this will be a much slower process with her.


Landon's weaves are really coming along. He can do a set of 6 perfectly every time, but with the set of 12 he likes to pop out at the 3rd or 2nd to last poles. I've split the two sets of 6 so they are about 4 feet apart and I stop and treat him between each set and then have him continue. Slowly I'm bringing the sets together. Yesterday at practice he performed the whole 12 together two or three times with no mistakes. We've got to get on this because his first standard USDAA run is on April 11th.

2X2 Weaves

Well, the funniest thing happened last night. Landon and Deets both had class with Terry, so we headed out to Frankston and Deets waited in his kennel for his beginner class while Landon had his private intermediate class with Terry. We were working on obstacle discrimination, which Landon was superb at. There was a set of 6 weave poles in the center of the ring, but we were not working them as Landon has had to go back and re-train the weave poles. I have been working him in channel weaves but had not yet taken the guards all the way to the top, so we haven't tried any poles without guards. While Terry and I were standing in the middle of the ring talking, Landon was upset because we were not paying attention to him. We both turned around and Landon was walking through the weave poles like it was second-nature, and turned around mid-poles to look at us like "well NOW you'll pay attention to me!" We decided to test his skills, so we ran some jump/weave sequences from all angles (around the clock) around the weaves, and he did them perfectly every time! Today, I set up my poles at home and he did all 12 great... we had to work hard at the second set of 6 at first, but he got it! He's about 80% accurate with them right now... but we'll get better!

Two days ago I got my Susan Garrett 2X2 weave training dvd in the mail. I spent all day Monday watching it over and over again and making notes. I did three sessions with Deets and Mimzy each through two poles, using the clicker method of training. Their shaping I"ve been doing with them has really helped. Both of them learned to run through the weaves in about 30 seconds. Our first session was only abot 2 minutes. By the end of Monday, both Deets and Mimzy could go through the set of poles from all the way around the clock at about 15 feet away.

Today, we did three more short sessions per dog and both of them go to the point of adding the second set of two poles. The poles start about 15 feet away from the first set, and both Deets and Mimzy figured out to run through both sets in about 2 minutes. Sessions once again were less than 5 minutes. By the end of the last session tonight, both could go through the two poles from all the way around the clock.

I am so thrilled with this method! This is my spring break so we have all week to do nothing but play with weave poles! YAY!

Welcome!

I suppose I should make my first blog an introduction. I started training agility at the age of fourteen after having grown up in the world of obedience and conformation. My first agility partner was a Beagle mix named Tweedy who was as stubborn as she was unwilling in the obedience ring, but after starting her in agility became an entirely different dog. She was a great first dog and taught me a whole lot... mostly patience. She also made up for a lot of my mistakes. Tweedy excelled at agility and earned lots of trophies and ribbons and even qualified and competed in the UKC nationals in 2004 and 2005. She went all the way to earning her UKC agility champion title.

In 2002 I got my first Belgian Sheepdog from my cousin and got him right into agility training at 6 months old. He also earned his obedience and conformation titles in no time at all. Training Landon was a breeze compared to Tweedy and he was competing very quickly. After about a year and his UAG1 title, Landon developed an intense fear of the teeter-totter that I could not get him past.

This was right at the time of my life when I graduated high school and moved off the college far away from home. I had no choice but to leave Tweedy and Landon at home. Tweedy by this time was 10 years old and retired, but Landon was absolutely devastated. After a year I came home and took a year off, and ended up going to college in Tyler, Texas, not far from my home in Dallas. The best part was I could take Landon with me.

During my time in Tyler my boyfriend and I adopted a Catahoula Leopard Dog who we named Deets, who turned out to be the most intuitive dog I've ever met, and wanted absolutely nothing but to please. Two years later we adopted Mimzy, a Catahoula/Lab cross who is my estrogen in a house of testosterone. She is stubborn, she has attitude, and she sniffs her own farts but she is an absolute blast to work with.

When Mimzy was a year old and Deets was 3 and Landon was almost 8 I decided to get back into agility with my dogs. I missed it too much. I contacted Terry Dyck at CMStreek Agility Training Center in Frankston, Tx and started all three dogs in classes right away. It was October 2009, and by December Landon was over his teeter-totter fear, and Deets and Mimzy were learning the basics.

In late Feb. of 2010 Landon returned to competition after four years off. We attended the USDAA trial in Tyler, Texas in Performance 1 jumpers and gamblers. Landon had a flawless run in jumpers and earned a first place and a leg toward his title. He missed the gamble because of an error by me (if wasn't the first and won't be the last).

On March 7th we traveled to McKinney Texas for another USDAA trial and Landon earned another leg toward his jumpers title and another blue ribbon, but had issues with the distance on the gamble. Deets competed in his first trial in Starters jumpers and did an absolutely fantastic job... we had a beautiful fun with great speed and distance and intensity but we took out two bars. Deets got third place but no Q.

This is where we've left of. This blog will be about the training of my agility dogs and our competitions. We are preparing for our next trial the second weekend of April in McKinney, so we'll be working on getting Mimzy ready for jumpers, Deets not knocking bars in jumpers, and Landon will be working on his distance and weaves so we can enter standards as well.